The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.
The Charge of the Angel.
A sermon delivered on Lord's Day morning, July
8, 1888, by C.
H.
Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
Acts 5, verses 19 and 20.
The angel of the Lord by night opened
the prison doors and brought them forth and
said, Go, stand and speak in the temple
to the people all the words of this
life.
The second persecution of the church, in which
all the apostles were put into the common
prison, was mainly brought about by the sect
of the Sadducees.
These, as you know, were the broad school,
the liberals, the advanced thinkers, the modern thought
people of the day.
If you want a bitter sneer, a biting
sarcasm, or a cruel action, I commend you
to these large-minded gentlemen.
They are liberal to everybody, except to those
who hold the truth, and for those they
have a reserve of concentrated bitterness which far
excels wormwood and gall.
They are so liberal to their brother-errorists
that they have no tolerance to spare for
evangelicals.
We are expressly told that the high priest
and all they that were with him, which
is the sect of the Sadducees, were filled
with indignation.
That which had been done deserved their admiration,
but received their indignation.
Such gentlemen as these can be warm at
a very short notice, when the doctrine of
the cross is spreading and God the Holy
Spirit is bearing witness with signs following.
Let them display their indignation.
It is according to their nature.
To them the only answer which God gave
was spoken by his angel.
Go, stand and speak in the temple to
the people all the words of this life.
Argument will be lost upon them.
Go on with your preaching.
They have lost the faculty of believing.
Go and speak to the people.
They are so given over to their doubts
that it is like rolling the stone of
Sisyphus to persuade them to faith.
They are so eaten up with objections that
to attempt to answer all the questions they
raise would be as vain as the labor
of filling a bottomless tub.
Go on with your preaching, you apostles, but
address yourselves mainly to the people.
Extend as widely as possible the range of
the truth and thus answer the opposition of
its adversaries.
It is better to evangelize than to controvert.
The preaching of the word of life is
the best antidote to the doctrine of death.
Clearly enough, if they had known it and
had been capable of seeing it, these blind
Sadducees were answered at every point when the
apostles were brought out of prison and bore
witness to their Lord.
Here was the creed of the Sadducees.
They said that there was no resurrection, neither
angel nor spirit, but these apostles stood up
and witnessed to the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead.
What did they make of that?
An angel had come from heaven and had
brought these out of prison.
Then there were angels.
As these apostles were set free while the
sentries remained standing before the doors, and those
doors were afterwards found fastened, if there were
no spirit, assuredly materialism had acted in a
singular fashion.
Every item of their negative creed had been
made to fall like day gone before the
ark.
The Lord always arranges Red Seas for Pharaohs.
All that the apostles had to do was
to go on with their preaching, and this
they did.
For daily in the temple and in every
house they ceased not to teach and preach
Jesus Christ.
This morning, may we be profited while we
consider our text and its surroundings.
May he who spake by his angel now
speak to our hearts by his spirit.
In reviewing the whole story which we read
just now, from the 17th verse to the
end of the chapter, my first thought is
that the agents employed for spreading the gospel
are men and not angels.
The angel of the Lord opened the prison
door and set free the preachers, but might
not be a preacher himself.
He might give the ministers their charge, but
he had no charge to preach himself.
Surely the angel who brought them out of
prison was quite able to have gone and
proclaimed the gospel, and so he might have
brought many out of their prison spiritually.
But no, it must not be.
His commission permits him to say to the
apostles, go and speak to the people, but
it does not permit him to join in
their testimony.
I think that almost with reluctance the angel
of the Lord returned to his master and
left the chosen men to go upon their
blessed errand.
As our Lord took not on him the
nature of angels for man's redemption, so neither
doth he employ the agency of angels for
man's conversion.
I feel glad that in the preaching of
the everlasting gospel, angels are not our competitors
at this present time at any rate.
Unto the angels hath he not put in
subjection the world to come whereof we speak.
They are ministering spirits, but they have not
received the Holy Spirit anointing them to the
ministry of Christ.
This divine choice of human instrumentality puts honor
upon manhood.
Those redeemed by the blood of Christ are
men, and their redemption from sin by power
is to be instrumentally accomplished by men.
The great fight which began in the garden
of Eden is to be waged by men,
even to the end.
The conquest of the revolted world is to
be achieved by men under the leadership of
the all-glorious Son of Man.
Ye see your calling, brethren.
I pray you, everyone, to preach the gospel
in your vocation, but specially would I plead
for zeal with those whose very vocation it
is to preach the gospel.
What a vocation is ours!
What can be more honorable, what more responsible?
To rule empires is a trifle compared with
speaking to the people all the words of
this life.
Lord, what is man that thou art mindful
of him, and the Son of Man that
thou visitest him?
Thou makest him higher than the angels in
this respect, that out of his mouth thou
hast ordained strength because of thine enemies.
Such honor have all the saints, for they
may all either teach or preach Jesus Christ.
My dear heirs, you may be yourselves grateful
that this ministry is committed to men, because
it is a condescension to human weakness.
Imperfect as human ministers are, we are better
preachers to you than angels could be.
We cannot sing with their celestial melody, nor
charm you with their seraphic eloquence, but we
have a sympathy with you which they cannot
feel, seeing they are not compassed with infirmities,
nor humbled by imperfections.
We know your sins, your sorrows, your struggles.
We know the roughness of the road you
traverse, for we too came in at the
wicked gate, and have floundered in the slew
of despondents, scrambled up the hill difficulty.
We can have compassion and give direction learned
by experience.
I suppose an angel would command a very
large congregation for a time, but after a
while you would feel that there was something
alien and distant about the manner of his
teaching.
You would be awed rather than comforted.
A being altogether superior to yourselves would before
long drive you to cry for your old
minister again with lips of clay and heart
of love.
You would prefer our feeble pleadings to the
more glorious but less brotherly address of an
angel from heaven.
God's use of the ministry of men is
honorable to men, and it is condescending to
men, and surely it is a blow at
satanic pride.
The prince of the power of the air
might have felt proud to contend with angels,
finding in them foeman worthy of his steel.
But when the arch enemy sees before him
no combatant but a man sent of God,
he feels like Goliath when he saw David,
a youth and ruddy, approaching him with a
sling and a stone.
Disdaining such an adversary, I hear him cry,
Am I a dog that thou comest to
me with staves?
Yes, Satan, thou art no better than a
dog, and we come against thee in the
name of Jehovah of hosts, the God of
the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
By humble, truth-speaking, earnest men, the Lord
turns the battle and routes the forces of
air that the old serpent may still fill
the foot of the seed of the woman
upon his head.
He thought he had made an easy prey
of man, but it shall be by man
that the enemy shall be driven back to
his infernal den with defeat.
By man came death, and by man came
also the resurrection of the dead, which glorious
fact is proclaimed by man to the eternal
shame of him that has the power of
death, that is, the devil.
To work by men must bring special glory
to God.
The weaker the instrument, the more honor to
the worker.
I like to think, whatever I may feel,
driven to believe from Scripture, that the great
fight between good and evil will be fought
out so that the Lord shall conquer by
feeble men even to the end.
The omnipotence of God will be glorified in
the insignificance of the agents by whom he
will achieve the everlasting triumph.
Those first apostles brought all the more glory
to God because they came from the fisher's
nets and were called unlearned and ignorant men.
The weakness which men despised compelled them to
confess that the power which they wielded was
divine.
The Spirit of God who spoke by them
found in them no fancied wisdom to obstruct
his impulses.
If the Lord will graciously use us poor
ministers to the end, it will wonderfully illustrate
his wisdom and power.
Somebody once said that it proved the divinity
of our holy religion, that it survived ministers,
and there was a good deal of truth
in the remark.
How I have wondered that this congregation has
survived me, and I think we may wonder
that as a whole the gospel survives its
advocates.
We are poor tools.
I do not refer to you brethren from
America, but I mean all of us in
England and especially myself.
We are poor tools after all, and if
God uses us to save sinners and sanctify
saints, he must certainly have all the glory
of it.
Brethren, the Lord has used us, blessed be
his name.
He has used us.
We should give the lie to manifest facts
if we were to deny it.
Brethren, the Lord means to use us.
He has said, Lo, I am with you
always, even unto the end of the world.
I cannot help adding that the employment of
men as sole winners gives a tender joy
to the heart of Jesus.
It pleases the Lord Jesus Christ that God
should use men, for he himself is a
man.
God as he is, blessed forever, yet is
he most truly man, delighting in humanity and
pleased to see men called to a work
of so much glory and honor.
He loves to bless men and to see
them made a blessing.
He delights to see the many brethren used
in their measure in the same way as
himself, the firstborn.
The Lord Jesus must take great pleasure in
the attempts of his servants to seek and
to save souls, for they are learning to
be shepherds like himself.
When our King Edward III heard that the
black prince was having a hard battle with
the French, he smiled to think that his
son was in a place where he could
show his valor.
When he was entreated to send off reinforcements,
he refused, for he wished his son to
have the undivided honors of the day.
The Lord Jesus, the captain of our salvation,
puts some of his chosen into places of
great peril, and he does not seem to
send them all the help they should desire
in order that they may prove their faith
and consecration and thus earn their spurs.
He takes a brotherly pleasure in the courage
and faith which he himself has wrought in
them.
All the valor of Christ's soldiers is given
them by himself, and all that it achieves
is to be attributed to him, yet he
finds joy in seeing them exercise their graces.
Like as a father delights to see his
boy take prize after prize at the university,
like as a friend delights to see his
friend elected to one honorable position after another,
so does Jesus rejoice in the honors earned
by his servants in the field of service.
When we save a soul from death, Jesus,
the Savior, rejoices in the deed.
When we thus cover a multitude of sins,
Jesus, the sin-bearer, sees of the travail
of his soul.
The father in the parable was glad when
his prodigal son was found, but he would
have been gladder still had a brother found
him.
Our Lord Jesus desires to make us happy
with that which makes himself happy, and so
he sends us out to win souls.
All these are good reasons why the Lord
should employ men and women to spread the
gospel rather than cherubim and seraphim.
Dear friends, do you not think that the
angels must often wonder at us when they
see men eager upon politics and negligent of
souls?
Are they not astonished?
Do they never say, we wish the great
Lord would let us go and speak to
perishing souls?
We would speak with all our hearts.
Do they not sometimes say to one another,
what are these men at?
Do they disdain their high calling?
God has given to them the great privilege
of preaching and teaching his holy word, but
they do not care to do it.
They speak as if they were half asleep.
Where is their zeal for God, their love
to men, their earnestness for Christ?
Brethren, these holy spirits must feel ashamed of
us.
True, they are our servants, and bear us
up in their hands, lest we dash our
feet against the stone, but must they not
wish that we were stronger on our feet
and were more eager to dash our hands
against the enemies of God?
We are carried as invalids when we ought
to be fighting like champions.
I charge you by the angels of God
who are not permitted to touch this holy
work, preach the word, be instant in season,
out of season, preach with a vigor worthy
of the divine exercise, preach the word in
some such style as you would expect from
those who are bought with the precious blood
of Jesus.
So have I spoken to you who are
men.
As for thee, O angel of God, thou
hast opened the prison doors and set free
the men of God, but thou must now
go back to him that sent thee.
Bright spirit, I dare not offer thee my
pulpit.
Feeble as I am, I must do the
preaching.
Oh, that thy Lord and mine may help
me and enable me to make full proof
of my ministry.
Farewell, angel of God, go thou thy way.
Secondly, these men are to teach the people.
All the words of this life they are
to speak.
The manner of their teaching is hinted at.
They are to do it promptly, yea, immediately.
Go, says the angel, go.
Do not linger here, go at once.
They did go, so that they were in
the temple courts early in the morning.
The first beings of the sun that were
reflected from the golden roof met their eyes.
The first worshipers in those hallowed courts heard
the apostles testifying of Jesus and his love.
Oh, dear servants of God, let us run
with the glad tidings.
The king's business requireth haste.
The first moment we can get man or
woman to listen to us, let us speak
the living word which we have learned at
the feet of Jesus.
They were to make this their primary business.
Go, said the angel, before anything else, this
be your chief employ.
I should have been tempted to linger a
little just to find out how the angel
released the prisoners.
He had opened the doors, so we are
told, but yet they were found closed and
fastened when the officers came and the sentries
had not left their posts.
Here is a mystery.
I should like to clear it up.
Are there not many such mysteries?
But the command is pressing and preemptory.
Go, speak to the people.
Let me tarry.
One does not see angels every day.
Let me stay and take in a complete
idea of the heavenly stranger.
Indulge me with a little conversation with one
who has seen my Lord.
Dear fellow worker, we perhaps are tempted to
study very deeply into mysterious points which do
not minister to prophets.
Let us then hear the angel say, go,
speak to the people.
Let us keep our thoughts to that gospel
which we are sent to preach.
The words of this life will furnish ample
scope for all our powers.
Let us not wander into endless debates which
are rather for curiosity than salvation, and tend
rather to gratify our taste than to accomplish
our life purpose.
The first and chief business of the man
of God is, go, stand and speak to
the people.
However simple the speaking, it may be rather
talk than oratory.
This is our one great business here below.
It is clear from the text that they
were to take a conspicuous place and speak
boldly.
Go, stand in the temple.
Go where the Sanhedrim holds its sittings, where
the high priest and his Sadducean comrades are
on the watch.
Let not the danger hinder you.
Go where all can see you.
Stand up and stand out.
Wherever the people are, there let your voices
be heard by their perseveringly taking your stand
and keeping it till removed by force.
The object was to make the gospel known.
Therefore let them go to headquarters.
Let them stand in the chief place of
concourse.
Let them be in the resort of the
devout.
Let them challenge the observation of pilgrims from
every corner of the land.
Brethren, it is not ours to hide in
holes and in corners.
Our gospel is like the sun whose line
has gone out through all the earth.
Let us not speak timidly, for we have
not received the spirit of fear, neither will
we hide our candle under a bushel.
We are to publish the tidings of that
life from the dead which has brought life
for the dead.
The persons for whom this preaching is designed
are mentioned.
Speak unto the people.
Unto the people.
That does not mean the poor to the
exclusion of the rich, nor the many to
the exclusion of the few.
The expression is most comprehensive and embraces both
the masses and the classes.
If the men of the council would hear
them, let them speak to them.
They did so, alas, with small result.
This is a truly gospel word of command,
for the gospel is glad tidings to all
people.
It is to be preached to every creature
under heaven.
A restricted audience is an un-evangelic idea.
Go and speak unto the people then, to
all sorts of people, to everybody.
Let not a soul escape if you can
help it, for your mission is to all
mankind.
O gospel fishermen, spread the great sane net
which will encompass a great multitude of fishes,
and with diligence draw it to shore.
If we take the word people in its
popular sense, it has a lesson to all
who teach the word.
Some aim at the intellectual.
Let us speak to the people all the
words of this life.
A minister whose congregation numbers about forty all
told rejoiced in the smallness of it, because
he professed that a greater work could be
done with a few than with a large
number.
In answer, a friend suggested that he would
infer from that statement that a greater work
could be done with no people at all.
This reduced the hypothesis to an absurdity.
I am sure, said one, that the better
a man preaches, the smaller his congregation will
become.
This shows what a large number of very
excellent preachers we have in London.
But our business is to reach the people
somehow.
To obey the text, we must go and
speak to the people.
They need it.
Are they not perishing for lack of knowledge?
The gospel is adapted to their needs and
capacities.
It is simple, suitable, seasonable, and saving.
The people will receive it.
If the poor have the gospel preached to
them, they will hear it.
God inclines the hearts of the multitude to
hearken.
We read of Jesus that all the people
were very attentive to hear him.
Moreover, the people retain the truth when they
receive it.
Note this fact in history.
The reformation in Spain was among the nobility,
and it was the same in Italy, and
the work soon subsided.
In England, the common people received the truth
from Wycliffe, and it never died out.
If you wanted to burn a haystack, you
would set it alight at the bottom.
And if you want a whole nation to
feel the power of the gospel, it must
first be received by laborers and artisans.
The martyrs of England were largely taken from
weavers and such like.
The people love the man chosen out of
the people.
The Bible is their charter, the gospel is
their estate, and when they know it, they
will retain it with heroic constancy.
What is more, they will spread it.
Christ's first preachers were of the people, and
in the streets of London today, and in
the Sunday schools of England today, you will
find that the people are to the front
in holy work.
We are glad to see the noble, the
great, the rich, the cultured, dedicated to our
Lord.
But after all, our chief hope lies among
the people.
The angel even mentioned the place to which
they were to go.
Go stand in the temple.
It was the most public place in all
Jerusalem.
Therefore, go stand in the temple rather than
in a private house.
It was the likeliest place to find attentive
hearers.
The noise of the sheep market in the
bazaar would be absent.
Those who came early would probably be among
the most devout.
Go stand in the temple.
But when they were bidden to stand in
the temple, it meant that they were to
stand in any place and every place where
an audience could be gathered.
So they understood it according to the last
verse of the chapter.
Daily in the temple and in every house,
they cease not to teach and preach Jesus
Christ.
Fellow workers, our business is to speak to
the people concerning eternal life, and we must
see that we do it.
If in this great house so many will
gather that the utmost capacity of my voice
is used up, this is the place for
me to preach in.
But if the people will not come here,
I must go after them.
We must take public halls and assembly rooms.
We must even hire theaters and music halls
or stand in the streets, for we must
speak to the people.
As men enlightened from on high, we must
carry the light to the eyes of men.
We must carry bread to the hungry and
healing to the diseased.
If not by one style of speaking, yet
by another, we must so speak as to
be heard.
It is of no use to go on
droning to empty pews or holding forth to
bare walls.
We must get at the people.
This is what the angel bids us do.
Go, said he.
Speak to the people all the words of
this life.
Thirdly, this message is described.
Speak to the people all the words of
this life.
Our teaching, if we are true to Christ,
will be not only a doctrine but a
life.
The high priest conceived that they preached doctrine
for he said ye have filled Jerusalem with
your doctrine.
Yet it may as truly be called life
as truth.
The Christian religion is like Christ way, truth
and life.
We have to preach words of life, truth
which brings life, feeds life and perfects life.
We are to preach all the great truths
which concern eternal life.
What are the words of this life?
If I had to give a short list
of them, I should say the first word
of this life is Jesus Christ.
And in the 42nd verse we read they
cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.
Jesus has the words of eternal life.
We preach his deity, his manhood, his offices,
his sacrificial death, his resurrection and everything about
him.
We preach Christ crucified and if we did
not, we should not speak the words of
life.
The next word to use would be atonement.
There is no preaching the words of this
life except we preach the sacrificial death of
the son of God.
The apostles boldly spoke of our Lord's death
for they said to the council whom ye
slew and hanged on a tree.
They had mentioned the precious blood for the
high priest said ye intend to bring this
man's blood upon us?
Leave out the satisfaction made by Christ for
sin.
Leave out the doctrine of a real and
effective substitution and you have left out of
the gospel the blood which is the life
thereof.
The words of this life are not preached
to the people where the cross is put
in the background.
The next word to my mind would be
resurrection.
This they preach very fully saying him hath
God raised from the dead.
The resurrection of Christ secured the justification of
believers and also guaranteed their resurrection from the
dead by virtue of their union with him.
If the resurrection were more fully preached at
this time, I am sanguine that it would
be a powerful means of conversion.
Nor could the apostles forget regeneration.
They would echo their Lord's words.
Ye must be born again.
This new birth is possible to you for
he that sat upon the throne said behold
I make all things new.
Leave out the doctrine of the new birth
and you have left out one of the
cardinal words of this life.
And then comes faith.
What a word is this.
Without faith it is impossible to please God.
By grace are ye saved through faith.
He who does not preach justification by faith
has not begun to preach the words of
this life.
He that believeth in Christ hath everlasting life
but without faith all is death.
The sixth out of seven words is indwelling.
The Holy Spirit comes into the heart and
abides there working sanctification within and producing holiness
without.
Without holiness no man shall see the Lord
and if holiness be not preached as the
effect of the indwelling spirit of God all
the words of this life are not spoken
to the people.
Then comes the doctrine of the eternal life
that the life given by the Holy Spirit
never dies.
The water that I shall give him shall
be in him a well of water springing
up into everlasting life.
This eternal life is seen here in the
perseverance of the saints.
It is seen hereafter in their immortality and
endless glory.
To leave out this would be to leave
out the grandest of the words of this
life.
If you desire another outline of the gospel
I would refer you to Peter's little address
to the council.
Read it at the 29th verse.
Here is the principle of this life.
We ought to obey God rather than men.
He who gets this life into him will
be under law to God and when that
law goes counter to the authority of man,
man's law will go to the wall.
God is supreme to the man who has
this life.
He lives as an obedient child of God.
The next great truth mentioned by Peter is
the cause of this life.
He declared the death of Christ whom ye
slew and hanged on a tree that followed
by his resurrection.
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus
that followed by his ascension to glory.
Him hath God exalted with his right hand.
These are historical facts which contain vital doctrines.
We must keep on hammering away at this.
Jesus died, rose again and rose to heaven
to make intercession for us.
Because of all this there is life for
the sons of men.
There is no teaching all the words of
this life unless these three great facts flame
out like the stars of heaven and are
made to be essential to our eternal life.
Then comes the manner by which we receive
this life, namely as a free gift.
Jesus is exalted to give repentance.
The gift of God is eternal life.
Salvation is by free grace and free grace
alone.
This life is never an evolution.
Spiritual life does not lie dormant within the
dead heart of man.
It is an importation from heaven, an implantation
by the Spirit.
We are quickened by the miraculous working of
the Holy Spirit.
Here we have the beginning of this life,
namely repentance, a sense of sin, a turning
from it, an abhorrence of it.
This is the gift of Jesus and the
beginning of the new life.
Then you have the privilege of this life,
forgiveness of sin.
He that lives in Christ is set free
from the guilt of sin by the righteousness
of Christ.
Then comes the evidence of this life, whereof
we are witnesses.
We speak to you of a life which
we have felt.
We do not talk to you about an
imaginary thing.
We speak about a fact which we have
observed, nay, a fact which we have felt.
A far greater witness is the Holy Ghost,
who as he converts and sanctifies men, bears
the best possible testimony to the truth and
life of the gospel.
The fruit of this life must also be
preached, whom God hath given to them that
obey him.
There is no life in Christ apart from
obedience to Christ.
Obedience is the sure result of our being
made to live by the Spirit of God,
nor must this ever be forgotten.
And thus have I very roughly told you
what you are to preach.
But now, fourthly, the whole of the divine
message must be delivered.
Stand in the temple and speak unto the
people all the words of this life.
Dear brethren, it is forbidden us to omit
any part of the gospel.
I am very glad it is, for if
we were permitted, we should sometimes shirk the
unpopular parts of it.
Yet surely it would be very dangerous to
omit any part of the gospel, would it
not?
It would be like a physician giving a
prescription to a dispenser and the dispenser omitting
one of the ingredients.
He might kill the patient by the omission.
The worst results follow the keeping back of
any doctrine.
We may not see those results, but they
will follow.
Possibly only the next generation will fully display
the mischief done by a truth concealed or
denied.
It would be a dangerous experiment for any
one of us to make.
And would it not be presumptuous to leave
out a word, if we might take away
from the testimony who among us is wise
enough to know what to omit?
It is a thousand mercies that we are
not left to pick and choose, for this
would involve us in responsibilities far too weighty
to be borne.
It is too responsible a business for us
to enter upon.
Would not the liberty be injurious to us?
Would it not encourage pride?
Should we not think ourselves somebody if we
were allowed to make a selection of the
best parts of the sacred message?
Surely he that judges is greater than that
which is judged.
We should soon imagine ourselves to be far
more nearly infallible than the holy scriptures.
Would not this greatly dishonor God?
Would it not suggest that God's gospel is
full of superfluities and excrescences and needs our
wisdom to make it perfect?
Should we not conclude that the Lord was
not so wise as ourselves if he needed
our assistance to adapt his gospel to the
occasion?
Do you not think it would open a
very easy way for another gospel?
If we might omit, we might also add.
And I feel sure we should very soon
add a great deal which would neutralize and
paralyze that of the gospel which remained.
If we felt at liberty to leave out
something, we should naturally omit that which is
offensive, and away would go the tooth and
edge of the gospel.
That which is offensive in the gospel is
just that which is effective.
What men oppose is what God uses.
If the offense of the cross had ceased,
the power of the cross would have ceased
also.
It is not left to us to cut
and carve the doctrine of Christ.
We are to preach all the words of
this life.
Have we done so?
That is the question.
Have we knowingly concealed anything?
Well, says one, I have not preached all
the words of this life to the people,
but I have preached them to a choice
company.
But you are told to preach them all
to the people.
The doctrine of reserve must not be tolerated
among Protestants.
We must not make that philosophical division which
is expressed in those two ugly words, esoteric
and exoteric.
This is abolished by the command to preach
to the people all the words of this
life.
We shall get into no end of mischief
and dishonesty if we incline to this Jesuitry.
We want an open Bible for every eye
and a plain ministry for every ear.
We are to preach the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth in fair
proportions, and to preach this to the people
openly.
At the present moment, there is a great
tendency to be obscure upon the true and
proper deity of Christ.
I enjoyed the commencement of the prayer just
offered by our dear friend, Dr. John Hall.
I enjoyed the whole of it, but I
was greatly touched by his lowly adoration of
our divine Lord.
The broad men will say that Jesus is
divine, but they do not mean that he
is God.
They speak of his divinity, but they reject
his Godhead.
This is juggling with words.
I hate deceptive phrases.
We believe in the Godhead of Jesus and
worship him as God.
Christ Jesus is either God or an imposter.
There is no halting place between the two.
He said that he was God.
He permitted his disciples to think that he
was God.
He has left words in scripture which have
made millions believe him to be God, and
he could not have been a good man
if as a mere man he had produced
such an impression and had taken no pains
to remove it.
There is also a sad tendency to becloud
the truth of man's fall and depravity.
But if you do not preach man's ruin,
you cannot preach all the words of this
life.
You must be clear about his spiritual death,
or you will never be right about his
quickening into spiritual life.
Until you preach the terrible doom of the
wicked, you will never see the Jesus who
has the words of eternal life.
The work of the Holy Ghost is left
too much in the rear by many preachers.
Have we not heard of late that certain
children do not need to be converted, that
the divine life is in them at their
birth?
Have they not preached education rather than regeneration,
evolution rather than conversion?
This is not speaking all the words of
this life.
It is telling out old wives' fables.
Brethren, have we not also a few about
us who will not bear all the words?
For if you preach holiness as the fruits
of the new life, they say you are
legal.
Verily, the results of this life are among
the most important of the words which must
be spoken to the people.
Grace which does not make us hate sin
is false grace.
We must preach repentance from dead works and
faith which works by love, and the people
must be told that Christ has not come
to save men in their sin, but from
their sin.
On this we will be clear as the
sun at noon.
If there be any other point of truth
which is kept back, let us bring it
the more forward.
Let us insist doubly upon that which others
neglect.
It needs that the whole gospel be brought
before the people that they may know it
and feel its power.
It will involve you in strife and struggle
if you resolve on delivering an all-round
gospel.
But fear not, the Lord will help you.
Even he who says to you by his
angel, Go, stand and speak in the temple
to the people all the words of this
life.
I have done when I have asked what
are we doing about this?
We who are God's people, what are we
doing in this matter?
Some of us are preaching.
Are we preaching the whole gospel?
Has any doctrine been withheld?
Let us bring forth things new and old
and keep back nothing.
Let us put every stone into the arch,
lest our building come to nothing.
Have we also preached these truths as words
of life?
Have we felt the life in them?
Have we expected life to come by them?
Our preaching will be very much what we
believe it will be.
And if we do not believe that God
is going to bless it, he is not
likely to bless it.
If we do not expect to see life
created by the living word, we shall preach
dead sermons to dead ears.
Have we preached as witnesses?
Complaint is made sometimes of a preacher that
he says too much about his own experiences.
I do not believe that he can do
so, for our experience is our witness bearing.
You can be egotistical and say that which
is to your own credit, and this is
censurable.
But you can also be happily egoistical and
say that which is to God's glory, and
that is commendable.
You may lawfully say, this is true.
I have proved it.
This is one great reason why God uses
men instead of angels to speak the gospel,
because men can support their message by their
experience, and angels cannot.
But beloved friends, are there not some of
you who never tell anybody the words of
this life?
In such a congregation, ought it to be
possible to put your finger upon a single
regenerated man or woman who has never for
a whole lifetime spoken to another about the
things of God?
Are such persons regenerated?
I will not come round and mark you,
but alas, some of you have never even
confessed your faith in Christ.
If you have not obeyed that important command
for yourselves, you are not likely to have
done much for the souls of others.
But having joined the church of God, are
any of you satisfied to be silent?
Are you content to let those around you
sink to hell?
What, never tell of Christ's love?
What, never speak of salvation to your own
children and servants?
Can this be right?
In God's name, wake up!
What are you left on this earth for?
If there is nothing for you to do,
why are you in this sinful world?
You ought to be hurried off to heaven
where you might praise God.
No, no, I am afraid I am mistaken.
You could not praise God in heaven.
You have not learned the way.
You could not join in the song of
the redeemed, for you have never had a
rehearsal.
Begin, begin, begin at once to praise Jesus
in the ears of someone.
Tell of Jesus and his love to sinners
on earth, or how will you be able
to make it known to angels and principalities
and powers?
Could not some of you do more than
you are doing?
Are there not young men who might preach
in a street corner or at a cottage
meeting?
Some of our evangelistic societies flag for want
of preachers.
It ought not to be the case.
What are you at?
If you could not preach to men and
women, could you not teach the children?
Very many Sunday schools in this region are
straightened dreadfully for want of teachers.
I could tell you of ragged schools on
Sunday evenings where multitudes of children are turned
away because there are no teachers.
What are you at?
You confess that you are not your own.
You were bought with a price by the
Lord Jesus.
Why then do you not serve him?
I have succeeded to a large degree in
routing some of you out.
I miss you on Sunday evenings, and a
good miss too, since I know where you
are and that you are out serving God.
You take your meal in the morning, and
then you feed others in the after part
of the day.
The Lord bless you in it.
You were not created to sit in these
pews and listen to me.
There is something better for a mortal man
to do than to be a hearer only.
I charge every Christian man and woman here
to listen to what I am about to
say.
Though I am no angel, I repeat in
the name of the Lord Jesus, the command
of the heavenly messenger, go, stand out boldly,
and speak unto the people all the words
of this life.
And may God bless you.
Amen.